By: Rashan Hughes

John Lasseter By: Rashan Hughes

John Lasseter (born January 12, 1957, Hollywood, California , U.S.) American animator widely credited with engineering the success of Pixar Studios through a synthesis of innovation computer animation and classic storytelling. He is best known for his work on films such as Toy Story (1995), the first fully computer-animated feature, and its sequels (1999, 2010).

Lasseter—who was encouraged by his mother, an art teacher—won a drawing contest at the age of five. In high school, after reading about the making of Walt Disney Company’s animated film Sleeping Beauty (1938), he was inspired to pursue a career as an animator. He attended the California Institute of the Arts , which had just begun offering animation courses taught by veteran Disney artists. After graduation (1979) he took a job at Disney’s animation studio, where he worked on The Fox and the Hound (1981) and Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983). His enthusiasm for nascent computer animation technology put Lasseter at odds with some of his superiors, however, and he was fired in 1983.